


guardian angel

by matr3oshka



Series: not all heroes wear capes [1]
Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Gen, Platonic fic, aka just cool friendship stuff, because friendship stuff is cool, soft leader maknae fic, yeah!! - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-08-01 02:49:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16276412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matr3oshka/pseuds/matr3oshka
Summary: Teambuilding conversations should be held at retreats, or pre-concert pep-talks, in Chan's opinion. Not in the kitchen of your dorm whilst washing the dishes. But things don't always work out the way you see them in your head (at least, according to Jeongin, anyway).





	guardian angel

**Author's Note:**

> i love stray kids

inspired by this soft [video](https://youtu.be/bqCkemVNVYk) <3

 

They all manage to even out for the group pictures and the MVs. It’s all a matter of insoles, bulky jackets, fluffier hair, standing next to the right people, and eventually everyone can pass for the same size. Usually.

Except they’ve got none of that now, standing in the kitchen, barefoot in ratty pajamas, wearing ahjumma rubber gloves by the sink.

And next to Chan, Jeongin is absolutely _tiny_.

“Jeongin ah,” Chan says absent-mindedly. It’s a special day – they all came back to eat together at a decent time rather than holing up in the practice rooms like vampires until 4 in the morning. A lost game of rock paper scissors was what led to the current member configuration washing the dishes (which is totally unfair, considering Chan cooked most of what they had for dinner).

He’s soaping the dishes, then handing them to Jeongin, who rinses them and puts them back on the drying rack. Being hyung, he should’ve been able to hand over the greater of the two evils, but being dad, all hyung privileges are nulled. Besides, Jeongin soaped last time, anyway. “How tall are you again?”

It’s not like they’re very much different in terms of height – Changbin standing next to _Hyunjin_ , now _that_ would be hilarious. Chan is pretty short as far as the team is concerned (just tall enough to ask Changbin how the air is down there, which is all that matters, to be very honest).

But like most rather more vertically challenged human XY individuals, Chan’s channelled most of the anger towards his growth plates into working out, and could probably comfortably fit at least one and a half Jeongins into his frame (not that he’s ever tried).

Jeongin tiptoes to put back a dish on the top rack, flinching when a drop of water lands on his cheek. “Ahh. I don’t know, hyung. 170?”

“Try _small,_ ” Seungmin cackles as he strolls by, reaching easily for the top level to grab one of the mugs they’ve just washed. “Or _fun-sized_ , if Changbin-hyung isn’t around.”

“Better watch it,” Chan says, soaping another dish, while Jeongin sticks his tongue out at Seungmin. “The rate he’s growing he’ll probably be taller than you in six months.”

“Yes hyung,” Seungmin doesn’t seem all too affected by this, probably insulated by the knowledge that he still has some centimetres of his own to edge out, and strolls from the kitchen with his water, humming a Twice song.

Jeongin looks crestfallen as he tiptoes again to put back a dish. “Hyung, am I really short?”

“Better not say that in front of Changbin,” Chan says, in a deliberately conspiratorial whisper. “Or me, for that matter.”

Jeongin giggles nervously, looking over his shoulder in case the charismatic rapper is nearby. “But-…but you guys are, you know, cool! You don’t have to be tall to be popular.”

“Well said,” Chan tries to raise his gloved hand to pat Jeongin’s shoulder, realises it’s covered in soap, and reconsiders. “You answered your own question. Kind of.”

“But I’m _not_ ,” Jeongin sighs, moodily rinsing a mug. “All I’ve got are these dumb braces and a face that makes people scared of me when I forget to smile.”

“Well, your _dumb braces_ make the fans go crazy at every event,” Chan glances over at the maknae’s dispirited face. “Oh, come on, Jeongin-ah. You _know_ they love you. And we do too. _Height_ ’s got little to do with it, it’s who you are as a person. And you can always change that for the better.”

It takes little to make Jeongin smile, usually – he’s a happy kid. But today seems worse than usual – Chan recalls him looking gloomy during dinner just now, too.

 _Oh boy._ What could it be? _Something a sunbaenim said that we didn’t know about? Something I said during practice?_ Or worse, and this literally frightens Chan. _Girl problems?_

“Can I really, hyung?” the younger boy stares forlornly at a mug, still covered in soap suds.

“Wha?” Chan pulls himself firmly back to Earth, back from spontaneous nightmares of Dispatch getting hold of a scandal photo of Jeongin and one of the female trainees kissing in a Ferris wheel at Lotte World, _he’s still a baby, just out of the womb, I CAN’T LET THIS HAPPEN-…_ “What? Sorry.”

“Nothing,” Jeongin mumbles, hurriedly washing the mug. “Are you done with that plate, hyung?”

“No, tell me what’s wrong,” Chan says in as fatherly a tone as he can manage whilst wielding a pink rubber glove. “Is it something someone said?”

Jeongin chews on his lip gloomily, staring at a spot on the wall. “If it’s…I don’t know. Does it count if that person’s…me?”

Chan tries to playback the previous 15 seconds of the conversation (inevitably including the Ferris wheel) to understand what’s going on, a painful process from which he is thankfully saved by Jeongin.

“Be an honest, sincere, modest person, that’s what JYP PD-nim always says, right?” the younger boy puts the mug back, eyes still averted. “I just-…I watch our videos sometimes and sometimes I say bad things. Disrespectful things, or not thinking about someone else before doing something. It happens a lot,” he deflates a little, looking impossibly smaller than before.

“I don’t even know it happens until I see things again, from the outside. And maybe Felix hyung says these things sometimes too, but it’s okay because he’s so handsome and kind, and Jisung hyung because he’s so talented, but I’m just…” Jeongin trails off, downcast. “Dumb. With braces.”

“Okay, first of all, Jeonginnie, braces are very cool,” Chan points a soapy spatula at the maknae. “Second of all, being better at talent or looks doesn’t give you a free pass to do or say bad things. We all make mistakes,” Chan shrugs, with a bracing ( _haha, you see what he did there, haha)_ smile. “You’re what, 16? As long as we recognise it and make the effort to change, we’re good, it’s fine.”

“But hyung, don’t you see? That’s the thing!” Jeongin throws up his hands a little. “I _don’t_ see it until after I do it. When I do it, it feels…right. At that moment in time. Doesn’t that,” he glances at Chan for the first time here, shrinking slightly. “Doesn’t that make me a bad person?”

Chan leans slightly on the sink, expertly compressing his growing panic, manoeuvring a glove as he tries to think of an answer to this – they’re washing the _dishes_ , for crying out loud. He’d prepared himself for long conversations like this with older members at a retreat, or a pep talk before a concert. Not at home on a regular night, scrubbing burnt bits of meat off a pan, with someone barely through with puberty.

“Jeonginnie,” he starts, nudging the other boy with his elbow, with what he hopes is a reassuring look on his face. The weight of the expression on Jeongin’s face is staggering – his dark eyes are tremulously hopeful, with an unsaid _you have an answer to this, hyung, right? Am I asking too much?_

Again, as it does about once every few weeks, Chan’s hit with the magnitude of what he’s gotten himself into here. _These aren’t just 8 boys who follow you because they think you know music. They follow you because they think you know the answers to the universe. And they don’t even know it yet._

“Being a good person – that’s something you’re not born with. Being _good_ doesn’t serve us at all, it serves others, and that’s why we need to learn it. None of us hop out of the womb and start sweeping the floor and doing the laundry for our mothers,” he rolls his eyes, and the younger boy giggles a little.

“Why do you think PD-nim bothered with the talk if how _good_ we are is predetermined when we’re born? _Good_ is a decision, not a condition,” he grins, playfully shoving Jeongin a little. “Just like vocal training and dance practice. And I know you’re going to be amazing at all of them one day.”

Jeongin laughs, the same way he does whenever his mother calls and tells him she loves him, awkward and embarrassed and probing for an opening to say _I love you too._

“Thanks hyung,” he manages eventually, taking the plate from Chan and rinsing it, before looking up, biting his lip to hold back a smile. “Taller, too?”

Chan groans, soaping another bowl. “Don’t remind me. This is what my grandma feels like, probably, watching her grandkids grow from babies to hulking surly teenagers.”

Jeongin tiptoes, edging his chin over Chan’s slouched form, before dropping back down with a cheeky grin. “ _Soon_.”

Chan doesn’t bother with the shove this time, instead flicking soapy water at him, with an added jibe of _didn’t someone want to become more respectful?_

*

It’s almost ten by the time they’re out, and Chan grabs a hoodie from the sofa, sniffing it dubiously before throwing it on. “I’m going back to the studio. Anyone want anything from the mart?”

“I’ll go with you!” Jeongin traipses from his shared room, pulling on a hoodie too. “I should practice our choreo too.”

Chan grins, throwing an arm around Jeongin’s shoulders as they leave, not before Minho can catch up and hopefully rattle off a list of convenience store snacks should they get back before two.

The chilly night wind nips at them once they’re out of the dorm, and Chan feels Jeongin instinctively, involuntarily huddle closer, staring at the darkness across the street.

It’s then Chan feels the need to say it, the awkwardness mostly quashed through years of experience with his younger siblings, but still lurking.

“You’re a good person, Jeonginnie,” he smiles. “Don’t worry.”

Jeongin lights up like a bulb, braces glimmering in the lamplight when he smiles. “Then you’re the _best_ person, hyung.”

Chan tries to let that expectation uplift him rather than weigh him down, as he’s had to do numerous times over the past few years. “Let’s work hard and make us better, then.”

**Author's Note:**

> hello \o/ ahh this is my first stray kids fic, if there's anything i should note/change do let me know!! i'm pretty new to the stray kids fandom, i was steering clear because i knew i would fall until i watched the first ep of their survival show and i was a goner ;u; bang chan is such an amazing leader and jeongin has stolen my heart, and all the members?? are so charming?? i'm going to be here a while
> 
> might make this an ot9 series!! aka cool platonic friendship stuff^TM between different members (but mostly chan and the others for now maybe i think hehe hence the name of the series)
> 
> big hugs to all potential comments and kudos, if you guys have any requests let me know in the comments and i'll try to make it happen!! heart hearts


End file.
